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Health Leadership

Boldly, Salem College has evolved as the only liberal arts college in the nation with an exclusive focus on health leadership. At Salem College, we prepare individuals for leading the transformation of organizations and our society to make healthier and more equitable communities.

Learn more about our annual Health Leadership Forum scheduled for Friday, October 18, 2024. Salem’s Health Leadership Forum features a selection of women in health leadership roles from around the nation. This conference offers an opportunity for discussion of current trends in health and networking while hearing from some of the nation’s most widely recognized experts and innovators in their fields.

Salem College health leadership forum

Why Health Leadership Matters For Women

Aerial view of Salem College campus with Winston Salem in the background

  • Women continue to be underrepresented in leadership positions across health and STEM-related industries.
  • Equity in pay, power, and policy remains out of reach for many women today.
  • We continue to see major disparities in opportunity and outcomes for women locally, nationally, and globally.
  • Women’s bodies are increasingly less under their own control due to changes in policy.
  • Women’s health issues receive dramatically less funding for research, pharmaceutical development, and public policy making.
  • Caregiving and other financially unrecognized contributions to our economy and our world are disproportionately performed by women, placing unfair burdens upon the women of today.
  • Having strong leadership in health will result in improving the conditions of our society and world and better outcomes for everyone.

Health Leadership Definition 

Salem College provides women a liberal arts education with a distinctive focus on health and leadership ensuring our graduates understand the power, importance, and complexity of health in our society. Salem College prepares students for a range of career paths and graduate programs through our commitment to women’s leadership development, teaching excellence across the curriculum and co-curriculum, and building healthy communities on and off campus. Salem’s students, staff, faculty, alumnae, and supporters lead in making the world a better, healthier, and more equitable place.

students working on science project in a lab

How Salem Does Health Leadership

More than 60 percent of students at Salem pursue a first or second major in health and STEM fields. However, every student has the opportunity to develop the knowledge and skills related to health leadership.  At Salem, students graduate with a unique set of competencies that no other liberal arts college graduates will have. This will be their tool kit for success in their future careers as well, as their lives navigating all the ways in which health impacts them as individuals and impacts our society.

Salem College students develop the competencies to lead, solve problems, and challenge the status quo in an ever changing health ecosystem. They develop these competencies through:

  • small classes focused on developing knowledge, skills, and aptitudes that prepare women for leadership;
  • co-curricular experiences that create the conditions for individual and team success;
  • active learning experiences in the classroom and beyond that prepare them to work in a wide range of organizations across the health sector.

A distinguished group of industry advisors sitting on the President’s Advisory Council guides Salem’s health leadership work.  This group includes CEOs, Chief Diversity Officers, Deans and other leaders of nationally recognized health-related companies, foundations, and nonprofits.

President of Salem presenting at Health Leadership conference

Our Vision for the Future

Every student at Salem graduates with a unique leadership development experience that prepares them to become courageous, confident leaders in health.

Salem College graduates will start biotechnology companies, become clinician leaders in hospitals and health systems, develop strategies for the pharmaceutical industry, educate communities about how to live healthier lives, and shape health policies and priorities at all levels of government.

Health Leadership News

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